Catch a Falling Star
by misplacedmemory
Summary: Jane Smith is an anomaly. Strange dreams and memories plague her. When she meets the Doctor, the skein of her life unravels slowly.
1. Jane Smith

Historical record states that a child will be born in 1940, in the midst of the Hull bombings. What it will not show for many years is the severity of Hull's damage after the war.

Like the city, the little girl will be a secret hidden in plain sight.

Birth certificates written in this shaky period are scattered among old boxes that have not taken a breath that was not filled with the dust of flattened buildings. This little girl's birth certificate will state the following: her name, her date of arrival, her parents, and her time of arrival.

In the middle of the war she will say her first word, but this word is lost from the meticulous recordkeeping of the time.

She will be strong, this particular little girl. She will grow up and live life a little too much for a girl her age. She will worry her mother to death, which will lead to her father's harsh rule over her activities. She will learn to sit quietly, and she will feel her spirit subdued under convention. She will learn about foreign lands under the rule of her country, and she will feel guilty. She does not know why, but she is certain she knows the answer to her own troubled thoughts. She will go to school and realize she can live a life outside the port city of Hull. She will enter a woman's college, near Oxford, and she studies as she makes her life in a small college town.

Historical record shows that will become proficient in anthropology, enough to win a scholarship to study in Oxford for her doctoral degree. She will write a paper detailing the evolution of the first humans in the Mesopotamian region. In the midst of these four years, she will love a boy who is studying for his doctorate in physics, but they will fall out of love before he is unfortunately killed in a freak accident involving radiation.

Record states her ancestors belonged to the distant houses of the land. But she won't know this until later. In the middle of her life she will learn of her ancestors and meet them and accidentally marry one of them.

Historical record states a Lady Jane married an honourable Lord. The Lord came from a highly respected house east of the country where she resided. Little is found to detail the circumstances of the marriage. This Lord disappears from the record after their marriage. No name accompanies him. It is assumed it is lost to Time.

In the span of four years she will move to London and forget about Hull. She will live in a professor's home, taking care of a little girl who comes to see her as a shining figure in her life. She will read to her and guide her and love her like a mother would. She finds a teaching position in a local school and befriends two teachers—a history and a science teacher—who are suspicious of a student in their class. Both disappear without a trace. She will make a fuss to the police, but no one will investigate. Approximately three years later they find her again, and explain they eloped. She won't believe them, not deep down, but she won't question it.

She is a main figure for the rest of the little girl's life. A fixed point for someone who will marry and have children and die. And she, too, will die when she is of old age. Surrounded by the little girl and their friends and the little girl's own children (who come to love her like a grandmother). She will pass away on the date when the first bombs fell in her hometown, but she won't know this.

But historical record is easy to manipulate.

In 1940 there was no little girl born in the middle of the Hull Blitz. There will not be a girl who lived in Hull and escaped to Oxford and worked on a degree. There will never be a nanny who loved a girl for all of her life, and the little girl will never know her. The two teachers will never meet a woman who's too smart to be working at a primary school, and who's just as odd as their mutual student. In fact, this women will never reach old age.

In fact, as historical record states, she will die when she is as old as the universe.

Oh, she'll exist, but not in the logical sense. There will never be a Mr. and Mrs. Smith from Hull who will birth this little girl. She'll never live in Hull; she'll live in London. But she won't really live in either of these places because she _can't_. She shouldn't even be _here_. She'll remember life after the war but these are only hazy. They aren't real memories. They aren't _her_ memories.

How can someone live with memories that aren't even _theirs_?

She is a living organism that has been transplanted from one place in time to another. It is said to be impossible to do such a thing, but the Universe is a strange place.

Oh, she'll exist, but in a mythological sense. There is a beginning for her in the past, long before life existed in the tiny speck that is known as Earth. She will be birthed to parents whose names are lost to Time and the girl herself. She will live in a world that is under the illusion of burning constantly when its sun touches its atmosphere and transmits its rays onto the ground. She will grow up, study, and become one of the masters of the Universe.

She will encounter a Lord and he will vanish.

In different eras of history, this part never varies.

The way she meets this Lord varies continuously, depending on the storyteller and the way the Universe sets things. Sometimes she knows him, sometimes he knows her, and sometimes they know each other. The story begins different, but the story ends the same way—

She marries him, and they will be stricken from the record as if their union—rather, their existence—is a clerical error.

Oh, she'll exist, but in a paradoxical sense. She will be found throughout the historical record under many names, many changes to her appearance and circumstance. She will be stretched throughout time and space as she runs away from the heavy weight on her shoulders. She will be proven to have psychic powers, and this will be mistaken for witchcraft for the span of history.

She will create herself when she is mad with grief. Not from her deserter of a Lord. Not from the loss of her allies.

It is from the incessant cries of her home and child, the Universe, as the men who keep her trapped try to keep her home and child under wraps like she.

It is from these cries she will create a vessel, the first of its kind, to transport her through time and space. She will tear her soul in two in order to breathe life into her own creation. Her child, she will affectionately call it. It will take her to a distant land that has barely grown compared to her own land. She will live thousands of years among the land's primitive people, and she will live and die and die and live simultaneously until the time is right. When the time is right, she will send her vessel back to the land she gave up so many centuries ago.

Historical record states that a Type-40 TARDIS with damage to its navigation and Chameleon Circuit will be stolen by an unknown Time Lord and his companion.

Historical record states that a young woman with implanted memories that seem real to her will begin her time as a nanny a year before these events will occur.

On November 23, 1963 two schoolteachers will become the Time Lord's unwilling companions through time and space.

On November 20, 1963 a young woman will wake up drenched in cold sweat after a nightmare that involved a world that blazed with fire.

On November 23, 1963 a madman will enter the young woman's life and history will repeat itself for the last time.


	2. Nightmare Child

There's always fire in her dreams.

It's choking, but she can breathe through it. She can even walk through it, if she wanted to, but she hasn't thought about that yet. If she looks closely she can see the fire twist in the wind. She can see spires aspiring to reach the heavens like old architecture found in primitive species, or watch as the fire dances a slow waltz set to the sound of a steady drumbeat.

She's engulfed in the fire but she doesn't feel herself burn. Her hands stream through the fire's trundles and curl them to wrap around her fingers snugly. The fire smacks against her slender hand and makes popping noises. She can feel herself smiling. The fire is cool to the touch and she knows it.

If she breathes in the air she'll know she's not actually burning. (But she knows this already. She's gone through this part a million times.) By now she feels the urge to stand up and touch each blade of fire. She can't, of course, and she knows this, but it doesn't keep her from dreaming she could. She walks out of the plains she has been in for three hours (two minutes, if you're using Earth dream time) and heads for the gleaming sphere to the east.

It's always intact from where she is, but as she walks closer she can see it's shattered. She can see a miniaturized city engulfed by what remains of the sphere.

Once upon a time this sphere encased a metropolis that reached the heavens. (By no means were the inhabitants primitive. They were, however, pragmatic and dull, which is a common characteristic in primitive cultures.) The sphere, when it was intact, was a quarter of metropolis' height. Now it was ten times bigger, ten times taller than the highest tower in the metropolis. If she looked closely it would be obvious that the top of the sphere—the part that remained intact after so many bombings—was disintegrating.

Things here, she muses distractedly, fingers touching the tips of the blades of fire, are smaller on the inside.

She reaches the point where the plains turn into a rocky, dusty terrain. The ground is firmer now, she notices. There is a reality now. The dirt beneath her is sturdy, not soft. The plains are soft and soggy.

She reaches the bottom of the broken sphere. A soft, cold breeze chills the area. From deep within the metropolis she hears cheers. There is the faint smell of smoldering organic material overpowering the once usual smell of recirculated air.

The only sound comes from the patter of her slippers. She always wears slippers whenever she visits the planet. She lifts the skirt of her dress—long, picking up everything everywhere she went—to notice the intricate pattern embroidered on the fabric. It is similar to pitifully drawn geometrical shapes. What does it say? She squints, smile forming on her lips, but she doesn't know why she's smiling. In her mind she can feel the gears whir, gaining speed as shapes are recognized and roughly translated. She's rusty in her practice—having no experience for what feels like eons—but as the last shape is translated, sides rearranging to form a language that won't be invented for a long time, but is already invented and reinventing itself still, something distracts her and the trance is broken.

It's the sound of a voice. As she looks up she will notice that in 0.2 seconds she will have to step two steps to the left in order to avoid a shard of glass from high above the sky. She does, because she has to (and because not doing it would have been a waste), and watches as the heated glass drills a hole deep within the paved ground. It stops when it barely scratches the upper crust of the planet, the scratch comparable to the width of a fingernail.

The voice repeats. Over and over again until it goes past her and flies back only to miss her again. She's smiling grimly and the voice stops. She's holding it now, the clear cube. It glows and buzzes as she fingers the edges gently. It amuses her. She lets out a choking laugh as she presses one of the smooth faces against her forehead.

_—get away. You must get away. You must get away. You must get away. You must get away. You must—_

The laugh is now a chortle, and is cut short by the sound of another voice.

"Why are you here?"

She does not move from her place but merely offers the voice part of her face. She notices his face blanch, and she smiles playfully. She feels a slight twinge of sadness buried beneath a hard casing deep within her, but she does not know how to alleviate it, and so her smile loses its intensity as a result.

"You need to leave."

The face that accompanies the voice is warm. Soft in its texture. It burrows into her ear to make its home inside of her. She feels the words bounce inside of her, creating a faint buzz that warms her gently. The sadness is mitigated, but not fully. Never will it be fully eradicated.

"You can't be here."

_Can't I?_

The face contorts. It is impossible for telepathy that is not managed by the War Office, he speaks internally, to pass through to another, let alone bypassing the frequency.

_You can't be here. Your kind left—_

_My kind?_

_You're a fairytale._

She laughs and he is again stricken with fear. The sadness within her stirs once more and she feel sorry. Sorry for him. He's so frightened in her eyes. Her smiles fades. It's replaced by a sorrowful look.

_What time is this?_

_Far beyond your time._

_Time is irrelevant._

He clears his throat. She knows that in 5 seconds he will tell her the truth. In 10 seconds there will be a fight on the other side of the planet. In an hour's time she will sense the fight will enter the metropolis. Many will resurrect from the dead, many who wish for death. There is a whole span of days where the sphere will disintegrate completely and the earth will take over what was once theirs.

What happens after that, she can't see.

The warm blush caressing her skin fades away completely, and she feels her body ache.

_There is a war._

Why does she ache so?

_We are losing._

The sadness grows exponentially like bacteria grown with loving care.

_There are horrors, horrors that should never have been used._

It's eating her. She feels it bury its teeth and bleed her dry.

_We are losing, and no one wants to lose._

Once upon a time—

_Do you hear me?_

—And the world obliterates—

_Answer me!_

—And it always happens because—

_You cannot let your children do this—_

_I cannot._

He stops screaming and she can suddenly see a flash of light. Explosions create copious amounts of energy in the form of heat. Space is a vacuum that traps everything but heat. She cannot feel the heat. She feels only the unbearable freeze of the vast emptiness that surrounds her. She hears everything—the screams, the cries, the _fire_. The fire has come to life and she burns from the inside out but she is still intact.

_Because you must._

His face falls.

_It is always this._

He shakes his head.

_You can never change this because this will always happen._

There are tears in his eyes.

_Because we set it up like this._

They are large, she notices. Full of fear and anger. They roll down his hardened face and rejuvenate him. It's started, and she knows this, but he does not.

_And I am sorry, but you know this is fixed forever._

As he reaches into his long coat, already tattered and singed from so many millennia of fighting and dying, she can feel herself lose her grasp on reality. She loses the broken sphere, and the metropolis diminishes in intensity. The fire engulfs her dress but steers away from her skin. The fire is sentient. That is how she created it. All things are sentient, and all things are dead on arrival. His face loses definite shape.

She doesn't know what is more painful. Losing the faint buzzing that has now fallen silent, or the sharp intake of breathe that burns her to signal the end of her escalating dreams.


End file.
